Our journey next took us north, further up the coast. On an icy cold, wet Monday afternoon in the small town of Namiitakaigan, we met Mr. Sugimoto, the owner of a surf shop, K’s Surf, named after his son. Five weeks on, all that remained of his shop was a tangle of wires, a pile of broken wood, and a surfboard snapped in two. Everything else was lost, his business erased from the coastline that had once made his living for him. Mr. Sugimoto was in his shop when the earthquake hit, and having lived by the sea all his life, he knew that a tsunami was likely to follow. He got into his car and drove up to the highest ground he could find, a small hill on the road above his shop. And as he sat in his car, he saw the waves roll in, an unimaginable volume of water, traveling at unimaginable speeds, eating up everything in its path. The waters came up higher than anyone could have expected, engulfing the first three floors of the hotel that stood next to his shop. Five weeks after the tsunami swept away his livelihood, Mr. Sugimoto wanted to show us where his shop had once stood, and we walked together through the icy rain to see if anything of his business still remained. He made his way slowly over the piles of rubbish in rubber boots, eyes scouring the ground as he stepped over planks of wood, twisted metal, telegraph poles, and suddenly exclaimed, "It’s my fax machine!” The fax machine had survived, along with the credit-card machine and the telephone wires. But that was all he found. A stand of pine trees separates the beach from the former site of K’s Surf. And about thirty feet above the ground, a panel of wood is clearly visible, impaled on one of the branches, clearly indicating the height that the waves reached that day.
After the quake, Mr. Sugimoto stayed in his car for two days and nights, braving freezing winter temperatures, with no knowledge of whether his wife, children, and other family members were safe. Fortunately, they were. The waters stopped a few meters away from his house, leaving a trail of destruction and destroyed lives in their wake, but leaving the Sugimoto family home untouched.
We followed the coastline back towards the south again, through driving rain and desolate landscapes. Five weeks after March 11th, the Self Defense Forces could still be seen scouring the river banks through the mist and rain, a line of dark figures with sticks in their hands, walking slowly in single file as they searched for the hundreds of unclaimed bodies waiting to be taken home for a final goodbye.
We reached Ishinomaki, one of Japan’s major fishing ports, and stood at the top of Hikarigaoka Hill, one of the city’s most popular viewpoints, and one of the best places for cherry-blossom viewing. The sakura hadn’t quite blossomed yet, but the buds were pink on the branches, and in places the delicate petals, so pale they’re almost white, had burst through to welcome the new season. A sign of life where so many lives had just ended. Below, the scene was a charred mess of metal, wood, broken tiles, cars, iron girders, and the lonely remains of the handful of buildings that managed to withstand the waves. The pitched roof of a temple and a lush pine tree still stood, reminders of the community that once lived here. The Self Defense Forces still searched for the missing, estimated to total two thousand seven hundred in this town alone. A few bunches of wilted flowers paid silent witness to the scenes below. Bulldozers worked their way through the wreckage. After the tsunami, Ishinomaki had burned. There was still a faint smell of smoke in the air. And all around, cars, tires, cooking pots, cupboards, a plastic waste-paper bin with a cartoon frog, a heater, plastic piping, a children’s story book, a blanket, vital at this time of year when snow still falls, a mirror, a crash helmet, a cracked teacup, a rice bowl, a mattress, a sweater, a child’s car seat, a tube of sunscreen, a lone slipper, a pair of skis. All the trivial items of everyday life.
We carried on south, making deliveries of supplies along the way, and entered Miyagi prefecture, my home for three years, and the Oshika Peninsula, an area of outstanding natural beauty, dotted with small fishing villages, and the gateway to the sacred island of Kinkazan. I used to go for drives there, taking the boat to the island to feed the deer, stopping at the small villages to see what local produce was for sale and to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of this extraordinary place. Oshika was the part of Honshu closest to the epicenter of the March 11th earthquake, and one of the areas hardest hit. The beauty of the peninsula was wiped out that afternoon, the one main road buckled and cracked, huge fishing boats tossed ashore, entire villages wiped away. On March 14th, three days after the quake, a thousand bodies had washed up on Oshika’s beaches. And five weeks later, the police were still discovering more. We drove along the coastal road, and as I looked out of the window, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. A line of people in white uniforms, pushing a stretcher on a trolley, with a blue body bag on it. I started seeing the debris around me differently. This wasn’t just the wreckage of houses, this was a graveyard for people who still hadn’t been found. My mind started playing tricks on me: a piece of wood sticking out of a house now looked like a broken arm, the trousers lying on the ground still had someone in them, a rock sticking out of the mud looked like a submerged back.
Electricity had been restored to parts of the peninsula, but there was no gas, and water was limited. There were numerous makeshift evacuation centers. One small garage in Kobuchihama was now home to fifteen people. The fifteen inhabitants of the garage huddled around a fire in an oil drum to try and keep warm in the chilly early morning air on a sunny day that, in any other place at any other time, would have been considered beautiful. They rolled out futons on the floor at night, sleeping closely together, not only to keep warm, but also because there was not enough space for all of them. Kobuchihama was one of the main centers for oyster cultivation in the region, the harbor sheltering the twenty-four fishing boats used by the men of the village. But five weeks on, only seven remained. One of the fishermen told me that when the earthquake struck, he got in his boat and headed far out to sea. He stayed out at sea for two days and two nights, not knowing what he would find upon his return. And when he came home, after the tsunami warnings had been canceled, he found that all that remained of his village was a handful of houses just high enough to escape the reach of the waters. Everything else was gone.
Amid the wreckage, there was laughter, smiles. It was astonishing to see that humor still thrived here. The survivors have survived, and continued to do all they could to survive. The people of the north are strong, practical, pragmatic. On a sunny morning, five weeks after the tsunami washed away everything they had, the oyster farmers of Kobuchihama were combing the debris to find items they could still use. The tsunami had destroyed everything, but a large part of the wreckage was made up of huge rusted iron anchors, items that could be used again if salvaged. These anchors were heavy enough to need four grown men to lift them, but seemingly light enough to be tossed about by the waves at will. We asked a group of fishermen, relatives of the inhabitants of the garage, if we could help them. They looked at us uncertainly, before handing us serrated metal hooks. One of them handed me his pink Hello Kitty gloves—to protect my hands. With no real idea of what the task was going to be, and with the vague instructions of "go over there, you’ll work it out,” I stepped through the wreckage and walked to where the work was going on. The men were using the serrated edges of the hooks to cut through the tangles of rope, fishing nets, and electricity cables that now tied the anchors together. One of them pointed to the electricity cables, and told me that they could make money out of them, the copper running through them being a valuable commodity. These were the anchors that the oysters were grown on, the seeds being planted on scallop shells bought from Aomori and Hokkaido, and taken out to sea to let the oysters quietly grow in the rich waters. It takes two to three years for the oysters to be ready to eat. And it will take at least five years from now for the men to be able to harvest their first oysters since the disaster. They don’t know what they’ll do in the meantime, but for now, they’re salvaging what they can to start working again. Anchors, thick ropes, buoys. And all the time, smiles, laughter. One of the oyster farmers
slipped on a piece of wood and fell heavily to the ground, twisting his leg awkwardly beneath him. He was motionless for a few moments, and then let out a cry of pain. "My bum’s split in two,” he cried, and the men smiled and laughed, pulling him to his feet.
I was working alongside Mr. Kimura, one of the younger oyster farmers. A husband and father, he hadn’t seen his wife or son since the day of the tsunami. She had gone to pick him up from school in her car. But they never came home. Five weeks on, Mr. Kimura was still waiting for them, as were his daughters. And until the day that they find their bodies, his daughters will always live with the belief that one day their mother and brother will come back to them. As he told me this, Mr. Kimura looked into the distance and smiled. "But I can’t sit around crying all day,” he said. "What would my daughters think?” And he carried on with his work, cutting ropes, carrying anchors, retrieving the tools that will help the town live again. My eyes were stinging. I made it my duty to go and collect buoys from further along the harbor, away from everyone else. The weather was glorious, the sun was shining, the sky a perfect spring blue. I turned my face upwards so as not to let my tears fall, not wanting to be weak when everyone else was being so strong. I looked back at the men working in the sunshine, and for a moment it looked like a normal scene. But of course it wasn’t.
As I walked back, carrying two salvaged buoys in my arms, and knowing that the following day I’d be on a plane flying home to the normality of my world, I made a promise to come back here. Before we left, I told Mr. Kimura that I’d return to eat their first harvest of oysters, five years from now. "Please do,” he said, "if you don’t mind the radiation.” He laughed, I smiled, we returned to our vans, and we carried on to the next village.
Originally from Yorkshire, Nicola Chilton has lived and worked in Asia since 2008, with stints in Japan, Hong Kong, and currently Bangkok. "Five Weeks On” is based on a seven-day journey to Tohoku in northern Japan to deliver food and clothing to villages devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The trip was organised by Kirby Fukunaga and a group of friends who all had a connection to Tohoku, and who all felt a need to do something to help. At the time, none of the major aid organisations was accepting volunteers, but there were still thousands of people struggling to live from day to day without the basic necessities.
TOKEN
By Edna Zhou
The conversations always went the same way.
"Where are you from?” The taxi driver—or the waiter, the sales clerk, or nosy bystander—would ask upon hearing my accented, not-quite-perfect Mandarin. "Korea? Japan?”
"Wo shi mei guo ren” (I’m American), I’d reply—often with a sigh, because I knew what was coming next.
"Mei guo ren?” American?
I’d nod, bracing myself for the inevitable.
"But you don’t look American.” Sometimes, this was said in a sincerely confused way. Sometimes it was said cruelly, as if accusing me of lies.
"Well, I am,” I’d assert through gritted teeth.
"Okay… but where are your parents from?”
With Westerners, the conversation went a little differently, but we still ended up in the same place.
"Wow, your English is really good!” the new coworker would say, or the guy at the bar, or the lost tourist who asked me for directions.
"Well, it should be,” I’d reply coolly. "I’m American.”
Sometimes, they’d leave it at that. But sometimes they would press on:
"Oh, but… where are you from really?”
Where am I from? I was born in Ohio and I grew up in Pennsylvania. I smile with all my teeth, pepper my speech with far too many awesomes, and ask for weather in Fahrenheit.
Where am I really from? I’m really from America. And for me, that label doesn’t come with any associations of color.
Yet when I moved to China, hearing those two phrases—getting complimented on my English and then being pressured to reveal my "real” country of origin—constantly reminded me that I was different, and not in a good way. That all people could see was my Asian face.
Those taxi drivers and nosy strangers and guys at the bar would never stop asking me questions until we arrived at the final destination: "Ah, you’re a hua qiao,” (an overseas Chinese), they’d say, finally satisfied that they could peg me into one of their preconceived labels—as if accepting that I was truly an American who just happened to have Asian features was too far outside the realm of possibility. Knowing I had Chinese parents helped them make their world make sense. But why did it have to get to that point every time? Why couldn’t I just be an American?
My greatest frustration in moving to China wasn’t the public spitting, the censorship, or the pollution. I was used to all that because (exasperated sigh) yes, it is indeed the country of my heritage, and I’d spent countless summers in Shanghai growing up. No, my greatest frustration came from the number of encounters I had with people who could not separate my looks from my passport, my ethnicity from my nationality.
My first-ever move abroad found me in Dalian, a second-tier city in northern China, in 2008 between my second and third years of university. I was eighteen at the time and had had very little experience living amongst an Asian population. Though I’d traveled to Shanghai with my family every summer, I’d been kept in an English bubble; I mostly just visited relatives and spoke to my parents, who translated everything for me. On top of that, my family speaks Shanghai dialect, so I picked up that language as a child. So I arrived in Dalian knowing very little Mandarin, and with very little knowledge of how to be in China on my own.
Instead, I brought with me eighteen years of experience as the "token Asian” in a small suburban part of Pennsylvania. I grew up in a mostly Caucasian town and went to very Caucasian-dominated schools and university. While I was cognizant of the fact that there was something different about my looks, I embraced that difference—friends jokingly referred to me as the "token Asian” and I even had T-shirts with that nickname printed on the back; to me it was a source of humor, not an actual defining characteristic. That, plus the fact that I was not treated any differently by my peers because of my looks, meant a part of me never truly comprehended that I did not look like my white friends. Thus, like a duck raised in a family of swans who then believes he is a swan, when I looked in the mirror, I did not see myself as someone who looks Chinese.
So to arrive in China and suddenly become invisible—to feel everyone’s eyes just go straight through me, because I suddenly looked the same as 1.3 billion other people—was soul-crushing. After eighteen years of believing I was a swan, it broke my heart to blend in and realize I was, in fact, a duck.
I would use any excuse possible—loud phone calls at the coffee shop, large-font English books held out in plain view on the metro—as often as possible to let the foreigners around me know that I wasn’t a local; that there was in fact someone around them who could understand their embarrassing, confidential private conversations carried out in loud English.
Upon settling down in China, I immediately began to notice a difference in the way I was treated by the locals, in comparison to the Caucasian friends I hung out with. As the whole intention behind my move had been to study Mandarin, many of my first friends were fellow American students, and later my circle extended into the local English-teacher community—many of whom were American or British, all non-Asian.
Whenever we went out, their smallest attempts at Chinese—even just mustering a ni hao or xie xie—would be met with a big smile and an enthusiastic, "Wow, your Chinese is so good!” Even friends who were Asian but not Chinese—Korean, Japanese, Thai—would be complimented on their language skills.
Then I would follow up with a few sentences in decent, albeit accented, Mandarin. Or sometimes, like when asking for special requests in a restaurant or giving specific directions in a taxi, I’d point to my friend and say, "Please ask them—their Putonghua is better than mine.” And in each scenario,
I would watch as the person’s face changed from being impressed by the foreigner who speaks Mandarin to disgusted at the Chinese girl whose tones weren’t perfect. I could imagine their thought process as they realized something was not quite right about me: Wait, you don’t speak Chinese? Wait, aren’t you Chinese? No, stop saying you’re American. You look Chinese, so you are Chinese. So… why don’t you speak Chinese?
Walking down the streets of any Chinese city, surrounded by advertisements for whitening creams and streets full of Audis and BMWs, I can’t say I didn’t understand where all the Asian-on-Asian racism was coming from. The country has spent the last couple of decades gunning for a prime position on the world stage, and its citizens want to keep up with the Joneses. Cars from Germany, wine from France, purses from Italy: foreign is perceived to be better, and that extends to appearance.
It’s why my Caucasian friends were constantly sought out for gigs where all they had to do was speak a couple lines in English in a commercial; one was even offered a large sum of money just to be seen with a company’s product for one afternoon at an open house. Meanwhile, other Asian-American friends were offered less money in their English-teaching contracts than their Caucasian counterparts, and some were outright denied positions based on their appearance.
Everywhere I went in China, I saw my Caucasian friends getting preferential treatment. Yet I was almost never on the receiving end of these perks and accolades, simply because I didn’t look like a stereotypical American.
For example: for a few months, to supplement my travel habit, I worked as a substitute teacher at various English schools around Dalian. Each time I stepped into a new classroom, parents would look visibly concerned when they saw that someone who looked like them was teaching their children English. Then they’d start looking around as if I’d simply hidden the usual Caucasian teacher in a nearby closet.
How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia Page 23